


Shed Some Anchor

by Grain_Crain



Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 02:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16777546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grain_Crain/pseuds/Grain_Crain
Summary: Kapkan falls into icy water, and thinks about his life and choices.





	Shed Some Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> A request asked from [stimmypistol](https://www.instagram.com/stimmypistol/) and it took me ages to finish. Here you go, darling!

The first mistake that Maxim made was being too ambitious in tracking down the footprints of a deer. Embarrassingly amateuristic of him. There wasn’t a second or third follow-ups because he only heard the bone-chilling crack under his feet within a millisecond. That’s hardly enough time to react and dart away from nature’s trap. Darned snow. Curse his enthusiasm and nostalgia of being a hunter in the wilderness. Humans are supposed to be on the top of the food chain and yet he is being eaten alive by a frozen lake with its mouth agape to swallow him whole.

Maxim remembers the manual correctly. In case of a fall through ice, he must remain calm and fight off the panic. That would be easier said than done if the ice is sturdy enough for him to pull himself out. No matter whichever way he looks, he sees breaking slivers of white and transparent.

“ _Cука_ ,” he clenches on his jittery jaw and reaches out to a sheet of ice. It slips. He struggles to reach for another. They crack into tinier pieces. One last chunk of ice but he is unsuccessful. As it crashes under his palm, so does his hope and composure. Limbs become sluggish and Maxim is unsure whether its due to numb nerves or soaked layers of clothes. He will have to shed off the weight but that would mean his arms won’t be helping his legs to stay above the water. Then what chance does he have? Swimming with an extra weight consumes more energy. He will have to take the chance of holding his breath while shedding off some layers. Jacket, camo pants and boots. It’s now or never. Plan is clear and he prepares to sink by taking a big gulp of breath. Cursing himself for swallowing a bit of water, Maxim stops his movement to conserve energy and grips on the top of his jacket.

How does one describe a sound of zip being undone under water? Block your ears and imitate the familiar grinding noise of plastic as if it’s vibrating inside of your head. The first time Maxim had to cover his ears was when he visited the factory that his parents worked at. Those awful rumbles of machineries. Screeching metals that grated in friction. A brief sharp hiss of his jacket zip reminds Maxim of those gruelling factory life. It was a burden that he had to take _voluntarily_ for the sake of his family; such was a teenager’s life of lower-middle class. Thank goodness that he was eligible to enlist with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. That was the day he shook off the heavy burden of being trapped in unending cycle of human labour. Those days are gone and left behind, just like this heavy jacket that he is trying to wriggle out of. It won’t be missed.

His legs begin to droop. Tingling nerves fade into numbness and it’s only a matter of time until he experiences hypothermia. Buckles are easy to undo but pants tangle around his ankles. He shouldn’t have worn such weighty pair with tons of zips for nifty pockets. Timur told him not to. Oh yes, his lover was wise indeed but old habits die hard. What can he say? As an eldest of the three, Maxim had to be prepared and ready. Don’t paint him tragic because that is the fate of the eldest. Mother cooes over the younger siblings and father sternly reminded Maxim of being the ‘man’ of the house. He fits in the trope of responsible brother who carried everything that his little self could carry because that seemed to help others out. In later years of his adulthood, he found himself imposing similar role onto his partners and they either loved or hated that part of his personality. Timur was the first one to rebel against the in-grained bossy attitude that Maxim portrayed.

 _‘My weight is not yours to carry.’_ Yes, that’s what Timur said. _‘We carry each others’. Together.’_ Those words almost brought tears into Maxim’s eyes. With such a soulmate, he could learn to take things easy. Cooperate rather than carry all the burden alone. Maxim didn’t have to wear the pants in their relationship. He also doesn’t have to wear them now in this freezing prison of water. All he needs is to an ability to keep a steady hand and undo the knot around his ankles. His pants sink down and there are less things weighing him down.

Boots are tricky, especially laced pairs. Maxim’s lungs are at a limit and he has no time to untie the strings and knots. Everything seems jumbled and incessantly chaotic when he is out of breath, just like that time when he survived the Beslan siege. Memories are cruel and selective. The floor was painted with blood from those children. Imagine the whole street being stained red, so how many small bodies had to shed their inside out? Air was filled with putrid sears and the high pitched screams that left a crack in his mentality. He felt the undeserving pain and misery of those lives gone and of those who remained. First came anger and then despair. Aftermath of physical injury healed overtime but the helplessness became more apparent as he continued to serve his duties. Feeling is only skin deep when you sporadically think about what happened every few weeks or so. At some point in his life, he thought that he felt enough so he shut out the whole incident completely. He didn’t want to be in the victims’ shoes anymore. Vulnerability wasn’t an option if he wanted to survive without succumbing into undulating cycle of guilt and self-pity. The world of hunting is simple; it’s the survival of the fittest. Therefore he hunted the lesser beings regardless of them being evil or animal and maintained his position as the predator. Well, so much of being a predator when he is sinking down into an abyss while trying to untie a knot and live. Death is fair after all. Perhaps this is really his time to go. Surviving Beslan was a sheer miracle.

“---!” A frantic yelling is barely audible on Maxim’s part. Sloshing noise of water against his ears deafens him for a moment. He sees a splash above the surface and caught something wiry slinking down. Despite the desperation to make an effort in reaching out, bits of his muscles are too cold to react to his nerves which makes his actions feel delayed. Although he can’t feel the exact texture, he can recognise a lassoed rope in his hand. Putting his arm through the loop, he feels the hard tug from the above, dragging him out of his near-death.

“ _Любимый!”_ A panicked gasp from a familiar face. Maxim looks up at his partner and wonders if this is a wishful hallucination or miraculous reality.

“Timur.” Maxim manages to say the name through his shaky lips. “You shouldn’t be-.” He was about to tell his lover off for being so close to fragile edge of a frozen lake until he feels droplets of warmth. How would he dare to scold the saviour of his life?

“I- I ran as soon as,” Timur coughs in ragged breath, “as soon as you disappeared out of my sight. Out of my scope! You damned stupid fucker.” He frantically mutters in their mother language. More droplets fall on Maxim’s cheeks and he realises they are streams of tears, containing a sense of fear, anguish, worry and panic. All the emotions that Maxim would feel when he puts himself in Timur’s shoes. He is stricken with immense guilt because he realises what he has done to the man who is holding them together desperately tight. Losing a lover, someone so intimate is a heart-ripping experience and it’s something that Maxim can’t ignore by being apathetic man of a hunt. He is a human, a lover who isn’t whole without the other. They are a pair after all.


End file.
